I've heard that a lot of the crazy stories about Nero were just propaganda. I'm not certain that this is an example, but it definitely feels like propaganda.
Nero had a very "peculiar" sexual life, but was also, of course, very powerful, which made him an enemy of the Senate that was very conservative about the image of Roman as soldiers.
So it is possible that the stories were true and they used them to dethrone him and later on the propaganda depicted him as a monster.
There were rumors in history, today believed untrue, that he killed his wife Poppea kicking her in the belly, also killing the baby she was caring.
There are rumors of him killing his mother Agrippina (we don't know if it's true or not).
The story says that Nero after losing the wife married his lover Statilia Messalina, but she was too different from Poppea so he started a search throughout the Empire for a woman looking exactly like his dead wife.
He also decided that the sex of the person wasn't important, so when they found Sporo, Nero castrated him and married him in Greece. Story says Sporo was dressed as an empress, but probably he never wanted that life and the castration was forced upon him.
The marriage with Sporo came after the one with Pitagora, when Nero played the role of the wife.
If all of this is propaganda, Svetonio had a great imagination, or, maybe, as the historians think today, most of it is the truth, romanticized, but mostly true.
TehCorwiz|5 years ago
DoofusOfDeath|5 years ago
ImprobableTruth|5 years ago
wil421|5 years ago
Yikes. Let’s hope they were just stories.
chinesempire|5 years ago
Nero had a very "peculiar" sexual life, but was also, of course, very powerful, which made him an enemy of the Senate that was very conservative about the image of Roman as soldiers.
So it is possible that the stories were true and they used them to dethrone him and later on the propaganda depicted him as a monster.
There were rumors in history, today believed untrue, that he killed his wife Poppea kicking her in the belly, also killing the baby she was caring.
There are rumors of him killing his mother Agrippina (we don't know if it's true or not).
The story says that Nero after losing the wife married his lover Statilia Messalina, but she was too different from Poppea so he started a search throughout the Empire for a woman looking exactly like his dead wife.
He also decided that the sex of the person wasn't important, so when they found Sporo, Nero castrated him and married him in Greece. Story says Sporo was dressed as an empress, but probably he never wanted that life and the castration was forced upon him.
The marriage with Sporo came after the one with Pitagora, when Nero played the role of the wife.
If all of this is propaganda, Svetonio had a great imagination, or, maybe, as the historians think today, most of it is the truth, romanticized, but mostly true.
casefields|5 years ago
The argument for some ship disaster is not analogous either.